Duas árvores inimigas: o discurso institucional e a legitimação da arte virgem

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the artistic production of artists diagnosed with psychiatric disorders associated with Psychiatric Center of Pedro II Hospital, proposing a critical reflection on the modes of subjectivation and aesthetic expression within contexts of psychic suffering. It is based on the hypothesis that such creations demand an art criticism that transcends formalism, embracing experience, affectivity, and the ethical dimension of perception. Situated at the intersection of art, critique, and clinic, this research conceives creation as an act of existence and resistance. The analysis articulates Ricardo Basbaum’s concept of artes/vidas and Roland Barthes’s biographeme as methodological tools for understanding the inseparability between life and art. The biographeme, viewed as a vital fragment that escapes biographical linearity, reveals traces of subjectivity inscribed in artistic forms, while the notion of artes/vidas expands art into the lived sphere, where the creative act becomes a way of life. Mário Pedrosa’s aesthetic theory—particularly his ideas of “aesthetic experience” and “the affective nature of form”—serves as the main theoretical framework, providing an ethical and sensitive basis for interpretation. The methodological approach combines historical research and aesthetic analysis with a hermeneutic and essayistic perspective, emphasizing the singularity of each creative process and its institutional context. Ultimately, this study proposes an expansion of art criticism into an implicated critique, one that recognizes the vitality of marginalized subjectivities and conceives art as a space of existential sharing. The art of the so-called “mad” thus emerges as a form of sensitive thought, freedom, and self-invention.